Houghs Neck Painters — Quincy's peninsula between Quincy Bay and Hingham Bay

The peninsula takes its name from Atherton Hough, who received it as a grant in 1636. A Massachusetts Historical Commission form prepared by the Quincy Historical Commission in 1986–87 says it stayed mostly farmland through the Civil War. In the 1870s, steamers from Boston and a horse-car line brought hotels and summer houses. James Mears started laying out the Great Hill section for summer homes in 1881, the electric street railway reached the area in 1888, and by the late 1910s summer houses were being converted for year-round living.

The city's 2009 neighborhood overview adds that the peninsula's isolation spared it from early development, that cottages and full-time houses eventually replaced the hotels, and that Houghs Neck is now densely built with what it calls a rather aged housing stock.

One resort-era survivor is documented in detail. The house at 32 Bayview Avenue, listed on the National Register in 1989, is an 1880s Queen Anne summer house with wood-shingle walls, projecting gables, solid bargeboards and a balustraded porch on three sides. After a 1941 fire it was reshingled and its windows were replaced. The MHC form calls it the best preserved of the handful of late-1800s houses left from the resort period.

Census Tract 4178.01 takes in the peninsula and runs west into part of Adams Shore, so its figures cover both. There, 1,549 of 2,624 housing units date from 1939 or earlier, 2,150 predate 1980, and the median year built is 1938. Detached houses are 2,200 of the units, and owners occupy 2,141 of the 2,608 occupied homes.

Cottages built for summer, now heated all year

A house built for summer use and later converted may have wall framing, sheathing or insulation that was added in pieces over the years. When exterior paint peels in patches on one wall of a converted cottage, check for moisture coming through from inside before repainting. Ventilation or vapor fixes can matter as much as the coating.

Water on three sides

Hingham Bay lies to the east, Rock Island Cove to the south and Quincy Bay to the west, and 16,730 linear feet of coastal structures ring the peninsula, according to the city's 2019 hazard plan. On the waterfront, plan for salt residue on siding, which should be washed off before painting, and for coatings and fasteners that hold up near the shore. Our Quincy exterior painting page goes into the details.

Seawalls the city rates as poor

The same plan lists the walls at Sea Street, Post Island Road, Shellton Road and Tern Road among Quincy's worst-condition seawalls with the greatest need for replacement, and notes that a 2012 assessment recommended repairs to every section in Houghs Neck. Houses behind overtopped walls can take on water at the lower siding, so check those courses for rot and let them dry before any coating goes on.

Shingles, trim and old paint layers

The documented Bayview Avenue house is clad in wood shingles with decorative bargeboards. Shingle walls and fancy trim from that era hold old paint, and 2,150 of the tract's 2,624 units were built before 1980, so many fall under the pre-1978 lead rules. Paid work that disturbs those surfaces in Massachusetts must follow lead-safe rules; see our lead-safe painting page.